tgamble

<a href="http://creationtalk.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000086.html" target="_blank">http://creationtalk.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000086.html</a>

"answersingenesis claims that a “billion-fold acceleration has been observed in the laboratory”, thus proving that radioactive decay rates are not as constant as you all would wish to think."

I've already posted a few links debunking the arguments used but claim amazed me. If the claim is accurate, it must have been under conditions not found in the real world.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: tgamble ]</p>

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Oh, the billion-fold decay rate thing: Someone posted that here earlier (I think)--the conditions necessary for that to occur were at temperatures in the tens of thousands of Kelvins under pressure in the millions of Pascals--in short, nothing you EVER see on Earth, or even the fugging solar system for that matter.


Edited to add:

On the "billions-fold" increase of beta decay: This requires the PLASMA state of matter to exist--stripping ALL electrons from the atom leaving a bare nucleus. Gee, want to know how often that occurs in the elements used for radioactive dating? Only in supernovae.
[http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0321acc_beta_decay.asp]
Sorry, I should have said HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of Kelvins. This is a temperature A MILLION TIMES GREATER than that of the earth's mean. A MILLION. What, was everyone being vaporized 6 million years ago?

What I find most amusing about this shithole site is that in their selected feedback, the title of one article (a postive one") is 'AiG commended for aiming for accuracy.

Delusional fools.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ ]</p>

GodLessWarriorTM

The speed of light is constant. Nothing changes it.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Actually, that is false. The speed of light within a given medium is constant. In certain media, such as glass and water, it slows down, causing refraction. I believe the equation is cn=c/n, where n is the index of refraction of the material.

tgamble

Do you mean 6000 years ago?

ps418

If the earth was heated to a plasma state (ok, bear with me), and then cooled and reformed something like the earth as we know it, all of the radiometric clocks would be completely reset. If you collected, say, a freshly cooled zircon, and dated it, it would yield an age of ~0 years, not an age of billions of years. Right?

Bubba

So Patrick...put Noah and company in asbestos underwear. Charge admission to the planet as a giant tanning booth. What's the problem then???

Bubba

JonF

Yep, they claim that, and in a manner of speaking they're correct; the article is at <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0321acc_beta_decay.asp" target="_blank">Billion-fold Acceleration of Radioactivity Demonstrated in Laboratory</a>. The author, John Woodmorappe (a pseudonym) is well-known for writing misleading articles about radioactivity and radiometric dating.

A particular kind of beta decay is enhanced many orders of magnitude at incredibly high temperatures. That kind of beta decay is not involved in any decay process used in radiometric dating, and there are well-understood reasons why the same phenomenon cannot occur for other kinds of decay. And, of course, the temperature required has not been attained on Earth (outside of some laboratory experiments) since long before the Earth solidified.

There's a good critique at <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/mar01.html" target="_blank">Modifications of Nuclear Beta Decay Rates</a>.

wade-w

Its not "billion-fold acceleration", but <a href="http://physicsweb.org/article/news/4/7/8" target="_blank">this article</a>at physicsweb discussing an experiment in which the speed of light was apparently accelerated to about 300 times c doesn't mention the pressures or temperatures they used. Just that the caesium gas was in an excited state.

HRG

Yes and no. The "speed of light within a given medium" is a phenomenological concept which treats the medium as continous (and not composed of discrete atoms/molecules). This is a good approximation for phenomena at length scales which are large when compared to typical sizes of atoms (10^-8 cm).

In a medium, light is continously absorbed and re-emitted, which leads to an overall speed of c/n. But between absorption and emission processes, it moves at the speed of c.

Regards,
HRG.